Tsarist Russia in Greater Syria

Download Tsarist Russia in Greater Syria PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Holy Trinity Publications
ISBN 13 : 1942699581
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (426 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Tsarist Russia in Greater Syria by : Najib E. Saliba

Download or read book Tsarist Russia in Greater Syria written by Najib E. Saliba and published by Holy Trinity Publications. This book was released on 2024-11-05 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syria has garnered international news headlines since the Civil war that began in 2011. Foreign intervention has been a major aspect of that conflict and attention has been drawn particularly to that of Russia. Current events can be better understood when examined with an understanding of the history that precedes them. This book illuminates a particular part of the history of the region by examining the legacy of the Russian Empire's activities in the Near East in the century before World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. Motivated by feelings of kinship between Orthodox communities, the Russian Empire played a key role in the Eastern Mediterranean, from conflicts such as the Greek War of Independence and the Crimean War to ecclesial matters such as supporting the birth of a native Arabic-speaking hierarchy for the Church of Antioch. Particular attention is drawn to the establishment of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the Holy Land whose philanthropic actions ranged from building schools, hospitals, and churches, to giving material aid to native clergy, and assisting pilgrims. The author shows that the deep historic and religious ties binding these regions together have not dissipated since that time, but continue to influence the Russian state's foreign policy to this day.

The End of Tsarist Russia

Download The End of Tsarist Russia PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143109553
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The End of Tsarist Russia by : Dominic Lieven

Download or read book The End of Tsarist Russia written by Dominic Lieven and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Economist Best Book of the Year A Financial Times Best Book of the Year Winner of the the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize An Amazon Best Book of the Month (History) One of the world’s leading scholars offers a fresh interpretation of the linked origins of World War I and the Russian Revolution "Lieven has a double gift: first, for harvesting details to convey the essence of an era and, second, for finding new, startling, and clarifying elements in familiar stories. This is history with a heartbeat, and it could not be more engrossing."—Foreign Affairs World War I and the Russian Revolution together shaped the twentieth century in profound ways. In The End of Tsarist Russia, acclaimed scholar Dominic Lieven connects for the first time the two events, providing both a history of the First World War’s origins from a Russian perspective and an international history of why the revolution happened. Based on exhaustive work in seven Russian archives as well as many non-Russian sources, Dominic Lieven’s work is about far more than just Russia. By placing the crisis of empire at its core, Lieven links World War I to the sweep of twentieth-century global history. He shows how contemporary hot issues such as the struggle for Ukraine were already crucial elements in the run-up to 1914. By incorporating into his book new approaches and comparisons, Lieven tells the story of war and revolution in a way that is truly original and thought-provoking.

For Prophet and Tsar

Download For Prophet and Tsar PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674262859
Total Pages : 490 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis For Prophet and Tsar by : Robert D. Crews

Download or read book For Prophet and Tsar written by Robert D. Crews and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-31 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia occupies a unique position in the Muslim world. Unlike any other non-Islamic state, it has ruled Muslim populations for over five hundred years. Though Russia today is plagued by its unrelenting war in Chechnya, Russia’s approach toward Islam once yielded stability. In stark contrast to the popular “clash of civilizations” theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great inaugurated a policy of religious toleration that made Islam an essential pillar of Orthodox Russia. For ensuing generations, tsars and their police forces supported official Muslim authorities willing to submit to imperial directions in exchange for defense against brands of Islam they deemed heretical and destabilizing. As a result, Russian officials assumed the powerful but often awkward role of arbitrator in disputes between Muslims. And just as the state became a presence in the local mosque, Muslims became inextricably integrated into the empire and shaped tsarist will in Muslim communities stretching from the Volga River to Central Asia. For Prophet and Tsar draws on police and court records, and Muslim petitions, denunciations, and clerical writings—not accessible prior to 1991—to unearth the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.

Russia and Its Islamic World

Download Russia and Its Islamic World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Hoover Press
ISBN 13 : 0817920862
Total Pages : 143 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (179 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Russia and Its Islamic World by : Robert Service

Download or read book Russia and Its Islamic World written by Robert Service and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russia has long played an influential part in its world of Islam, and not all the dimensions are as widely understood as they ought to be. In Russia and Its Islamic World, Robert Service examines Russia's interactions with Islam at home and around the globe and pinpoints the tsarist and Soviet legacy, current complications, and future possibilities. The author details how the Russian encounter with Islam was close and problematic long before the twenty-first century and how Russia has recently chosen to interfere in Muslim states of the Middle East, building alliances and making enemies. Service reveals how some features of the present-day relationship continue past policies; others are starkly and perilously different, making the current moment in global affairs dangerous for both Russians and the rest of us. He describes how the Kremlin dominates Muslims in the Russian Federation, exerts a deep influence on the Muslim-inhabited states on Russia's southern frontiers, and has lunged militarily and politically into the Middle East. Foreign Muslims, he shows, do not value the leadership in Moscow except as a means to an end; Putin's pose as a friend of the Islamic world is no more than a pose—and a hypocritical one at that.

Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia

Download Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674972619
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia by : Sergei Antonov

Download or read book Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia written by Sergei Antonov and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As readers of classic Russian literature know, the nineteenth century was a time of pervasive financial anxiety. With incomes erratic and banks inadequate, Russians of all social castes were deeply enmeshed in networks of credit and debt. The necessity of borrowing and lending shaped perceptions of material and moral worth, as well as notions of social respectability and personal responsibility. Credit and debt were defining features of imperial Russia’s culture of property ownership. Sergei Antonov recreates this vanished world of borrowers, bankrupts, lenders, and loan sharks in imperial Russia from the reign of Nicholas I to the period of great social and political reforms of the 1860s. Poring over a trove of previously unexamined records, Antonov gleans insights into the experiences of ordinary Russians, rich and poor, and shows how Russia’s informal but sprawling credit system helped cement connections among property owners across socioeconomic lines. Individuals of varying rank and wealth commonly borrowed from one another. Without a firm legal basis for formalizing debt relationships, obtaining a loan often hinged on subjective perceptions of trustworthiness and reputation. Even after joint-stock banks appeared in Russia in the 1860s, credit continued to operate through vast networks linked by word of mouth, as well as ties of kinship and community. Disputes over debt were common, and Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia offers close readings of legal cases to argue that Russian courts—usually thought to be underdeveloped in this era—provided an effective forum for defining and protecting private property interests.

European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948

Download European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030555402
Total Pages : 476 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (35 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948 by : Karène Sanchez Summerer

Download or read book European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948 written by Karène Sanchez Summerer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intro -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Introduction -- Genesis of a Project -- The Power of a Cultural Paradigm for British Mandate Palestine and Christian Communities -- Precedents -- Looking at Cultural Diplomacy in a Proto-National Setting: Towards an Integrative Approach -- Overview of the Book -- Speaking to the Silences? -- Bibliography -- Turning the Tables? Arab Appropriation and Production of Cultural Diplomacy -- Introduction Part I Indigenising Cultural Diplomacy? -- Bibliography -- Orthodox Clubs and Associations: Cultural, Educational and Religious Networks Between Palestine and Transjordan, 1925-1950 -- Orthodox Laity in the Emirate of Transjordan: Developing Diplomatic Ties in a Political Sphere in Reconfiguration -- Orthodox Laity During the Interwar Period: Regional Networks and Circulations -- Claims for Cultural and Educational Facilities in the New Capital -- Orthodox Laity and the Mandate Representative: Creating Political Ties -- The Orthodox Notables in Transjordan and the Development of the Arab Orthodox Nahda Association -- The Foundation of the Arab Orthodox Nahda Association: A Palestinian Connection? -- The Arab Orthodox Nahda Association: Creating a Communal Urban Presence -- Migration and Regional Circulation: Expanding the Arab Orthodox Imprint in Amman -- The 1940s and the Change of Diplomatic Paradigm -- From Sunday School to the Educational Association -- Sporting and Cultural Associations: Family Networks and Know-How -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- The Making Stage of the Modern Palestinian Arabic Novel in the Experiences of the udabāʾ Khalīl Baydas (1874-1949) and Iskandar al-Khūri al-BeitJāli (1890-1973) -- A Cultural Life Before Its Destruction -- Literature, Nahda and Russian Schools in Palestine.

Russian Hajj

Download Russian Hajj PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501701304
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Russian Hajj by : Eileen Kane

Download or read book Russian Hajj written by Eileen Kane and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, as a consequence of imperial conquest and a mobility revolution, Russia became a crossroads of the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. The first book in any language on the hajj under tsarist and Soviet rule, Russian Hajj tells the story of how tsarist officials struggled to control and co-opt Russia's mass hajj traffic, seeing it as not only a liability but also an opportunity. To support the hajj as a matter of state surveillance and control was controversial, given the preeminent position of the Orthodox Church. But nor could the hajj be ignored, or banned, due to Russia's policy of toleration of Islam. As a cross-border, migratory phenomenon, the hajj stoked officials' fears of infectious disease, Islamic revolt, and interethnic conflict, but Eileen Kane innovatively argues that it also generated new thinking within the government about the utility of the empire's Muslims and their global networks.

Spies and Scholars

Download Spies and Scholars PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674246578
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Spies and Scholars by : Gregory Afinogenov

Download or read book Spies and Scholars written by Gregory Afinogenov and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Financial Times Best Book of the Year The untold story of how Russian espionage in imperial China shaped the emergence of the Russian Empire as a global power. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire made concerted efforts to collect information about China. It bribed Chinese porcelain-makers to give up trade secrets, sent Buddhist monks to Mongolia on intelligence-gathering missions, and trained students at its Orthodox mission in Beijing to spy on their hosts. From diplomatic offices to guard posts on the Chinese frontier, Russians were producing knowledge everywhere, not only at elite institutions like the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. But that information was secret, not destined for wide circulation. Gregory Afinogenov distinguishes between the kinds of knowledge Russia sought over the years and argues that they changed with the shifting aims of the state and its perceived place in the world. In the seventeenth century, Russian bureaucrats were focused on China and the forbidding Siberian frontier. They relied more on spies, including Jesuit scholars stationed in China. In the early nineteenth century, the geopolitical challenge shifted to Europe: rivalry with Britain drove the Russians to stake their prestige on public-facing intellectual work, and knowledge of the East was embedded in the academy. None of these institutional configurations was especially effective in delivering strategic or commercial advantages. But various knowledge regimes did have their consequences. Knowledge filtered through Russian espionage and publication found its way to Europe, informing the encounter between China and Western empires. Based on extensive archival research in Russia and beyond, Spies and Scholars breaks down long-accepted assumptions about the connection between knowledge regimes and imperial power and excavates an intellectual legacy largely neglected by historians.

The Dream Palace of the Arabs

Download The Dream Palace of the Arabs PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307484033
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Dream Palace of the Arabs by : Fouad Ajami

Download or read book The Dream Palace of the Arabs written by Fouad Ajami and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-09-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.

Greater Syria

Download Greater Syria PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195363043
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Greater Syria by : Daniel Pipes

Download or read book Greater Syria written by Daniel Pipes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-03-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While for many years scholars and journalists have focused on the more obvious manifestations of political life in the Middle East, one major theme has been consistently neglected. This is Pan-Syrian nationalism--the dream of creating a Greater Syria out of an area now governed by Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey. Though not nearly as well known as Arab or Palestinian nationalism and hardly studied in depth, Pan-Syrianism has had a profound effect on Middle Eastern politics since the end of World War I. In Greater Syria, the noted Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes provides the first comprehensive account of this intriguing, important, and little understood ideology.

The Balfour Declaration

Download The Balfour Declaration PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1786632489
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (866 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Balfour Declaration by : Bernard Regan

Download or read book The Balfour Declaration written by Bernard Regan and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true history of the imperial deal that transformed the Middle East and sealed the fate of Palestine On 2 November 1917, the British government, represented by Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, declared it was in favour of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This short note would become one of the most controversial documents of modern history. Offering new insights into the imperial rivalries between Britain, Germany and the Ottomans, Regan exposes British policy in the region as part of a larger geopolitical game. He charts the debates within the British government, the Zionist movement, and the Palestinian groups struggling for selfdetermination. The after-effects of these events are still felt today.

Syria

Download Syria PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190911662
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (99 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Syria by : Dawn Chatty

Download or read book Syria written by Dawn Chatty and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dispossession and forced migration of nearly 50 per cent of Syria's population has produced the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. This new book places the current displacement within the context of the widespread migrations that have indelibly marked the region throughout the last 150 years. Syria itself has harbored millions from its neighboring lands, and Syrian society has been shaped by these diasporas. Dawn Chatty explores how modern Syria came to be a refuge state, focusing first on the major forced migrations into Syria of Circassians, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, and Iraqis. Drawing heavily on individual narratives and stories of integration, adaptation, and compromise, she shows that a local cosmopolitanism came to be seen as intrinsic to Syrian society. She examines the current outflow of people from Syria to neighboring states as individuals and families seek survival with dignity, arguing that though the future remains uncertain, the resilience and strength of Syrian society both displaced internally within Syria and externally across borders bodes well for successful return and reintegration. If there is any hope to be found in the Syrian civil war, it is in this history.

British Interests in Palestine, 1800-1901

Download British Interests in Palestine, 1800-1901 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis British Interests in Palestine, 1800-1901 by : Abdul Latif Tibawi

Download or read book British Interests in Palestine, 1800-1901 written by Abdul Latif Tibawi and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Imperial Mecca

Download Imperial Mecca PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231549091
Total Pages : 599 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Imperial Mecca by : Michael Christopher Low

Download or read book Imperial Mecca written by Michael Christopher Low and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases. European, especially British Indian, officials also feared that lengthy sojourns in Arabia might expose their Muslim subjects to radicalizing influences from anticolonial dissidents and pan-Islamic activists. European colonial empires’ newfound ability to set the terms of hajj travel not only affected the lives of millions of pilgrims but also dramatically challenged the Ottoman Empire, the world’s only remaining Muslim imperial power. Michael Christopher Low analyzes the late Ottoman hajj and Hijaz region as transimperial spaces, reshaped by the competing forces of Istanbul’s project of frontier modernization and the extraterritorial reach of British India’s steamship empire in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. Imperial Mecca recasts Ottoman Arabia as a distant, unstable semiautonomous frontier that Istanbul struggled to modernize and defend against the onslaught of colonial steamship mobility. As it turned out, steamships carried not just pilgrims, passports, and microbes, but the specter of legal imperialism and colonial intervention. Over the course of roughly a half century from the 1850s through World War I, British India’s fear of the hajj as a vector of anticolonial subversion gradually gave way to an increasingly sophisticated administrative, legal, and medical protectorate over the steamship hajj, threatening to eclipse the Ottoman state and Caliphate’s prized legitimizing claim as protector of Islam’s most holy places. Drawing on a wide range of Ottoman and British archival sources, this book sheds new light on the transimperial and global histories traversed along the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Russian Foreign Policy

Download Russian Foreign Policy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : CQ Press
ISBN 13 : 1483322084
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (833 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Russian Foreign Policy by : Nikolas K. Gvosdev

Download or read book Russian Foreign Policy written by Nikolas K. Gvosdev and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a truly contemporary analysis of Moscow′s relations with its neighbors and other strategic international actors, Gvosdev and Marsh use a comprehensive vectors approach, dividing the world into eight geographic zones. Each vector chapter looks at the dynamics of key bilateral relationships while highlighting major topical issues—oil and energy, defense policy, economic policy, the role of international institutions, and the impact of major interest groups or influencers—demonstrating that Russia formulates multiple, sometimes contrasting, foreign policies. Providing rich historical context as well as exposure to the scholarly literature, the authors offer an incisive look at how and why Russia partners with some states while it counter-balances others.

The Subjects of Ottoman International Law

Download The Subjects of Ottoman International Law PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253056624
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Subjects of Ottoman International Law by : Lâle Can

Download or read book The Subjects of Ottoman International Law written by Lâle Can and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The core of this edited volume originates from a special issue of the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (JOTSA) that goes well beyond the special issue to incorporate the stimulating discussions and insights of two Middle East Studies Association conference roundtables and the important work of additional scholars in order to create a state-of-the-field volume on Ottoman sociolegal studies, particularly regarding Ottoman international law from the eighteenth century to the end of the empire. It makes several important contributions to Ottoman and Turkish studies, namely, by introducing these disciplines to the broader fields of trans-imperial studies, comparative international law, and legal history. Combining the best practices of diplomatic history and history from below to integrate the Ottoman Empire and its subjects into the broader debates of the nineteenth-century trans-imperial history this unique volume represents the exciting work and cutting-edge scholarship on these topics that will continue to shape the field in years to come.

The Russian Origins of the First World War

Download The Russian Origins of the First World War PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674072332
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Russian Origins of the First World War by : Sean McMeekin

Download or read book The Russian Origins of the First World War written by Sean McMeekin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The catastrophe of the First World War, and the destruction, revolution, and enduring hostilities it wrought, make the issue of its origins a perennial puzzle. Since World War II, Germany has been viewed as the primary culprit. Now, in a major reinterpretation of the conflict, Sean McMeekin rejects the standard notions of the war’s beginning as either a Germano-Austrian preemptive strike or a “tragedy of miscalculation.” Instead, he proposes that the key to the outbreak of violence lies in St. Petersburg. It was Russian statesmen who unleashed the war through conscious policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in the Near East. Unlike their civilian counterparts in Berlin, who would have preferred to localize the Austro-Serbian conflict, Russian leaders desired a more general war so long as British participation was assured. The war of 1914 was launched at a propitious moment for harnessing the might of Britain and France to neutralize the German threat to Russia’s goal: partitioning the Ottoman Empire to ensure control of the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Nearly a century has passed since the guns fell silent on the western front. But in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, World War I smolders still. Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Jews, and other regional antagonists continue fighting over the last scraps of the Ottoman inheritance. As we seek to make sense of these conflicts, McMeekin’s powerful exposé of Russia’s aims in the First World War will illuminate our understanding of the twentieth century.